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IndustryUpdate

ANNOUNCEMENTS financial activities. Founded in 2019, Sperax previously
launched USDs, described as the first auto-yield stable-
coin, and has expanded its defi infrastructure across
American Banker honors Fifth Arbitrum and BNB Chain. SperaxOS includes more than
Third, Vantage Bank, Custodia 100 integrated defi and Web3 tools, support for 70-plus
AI model providers, transaction simulation and risk con-
Fifth Third Bank’s Newline platform was named an trols, and an on-chain agent marketplace, the company
Innovation of the Year 2026 honoree by American noted, adding that the open-source approach supports
Banker for its role in supporting large-scale payments transparency and safer AI-driven capital management.
and embedded finance capabilities for fintechs and
enterprise clients. The API-driven platform enables Titan secures $3M in new funding
businesses to embed payments, cards and financial
services into their own ecosystems while leveraging the Titan, a banking-native AI platform designed specifi-
regulatory framework and scale of a major U.S. bank. cally for financial institutions, raised $3 million in fund-
American Banker highlighted Newline’s 2025 launch of ing led by Entropy Ventures to accelerate development
agentic commerce infrastructure designed to support of auditable and explainable AI infrastructure for regu-
AI-initiated payments. Fifth Third said Newline is now lated banking environments. Emerging from stealth in
the fastest-growing segment within its commercial pay- October 2025, Titan said it has rapidly expanded adop-
ments business, which generated more than $1 billion in tion by focusing on AI systems trained on banking-spe-
fee revenue in 2025. cific language, workflows and compliance requirements
rather than general-purpose large language models.
In addition, American Banker ranked Vantage Bank The company serves banks, credit unions and fintechs
CEO Jeff Sinnott and Custodia CEO Caitlin Long first seeking AI tools aligned with governance and examiner
and second, respectively, on its inaugural list of The expectations. Titan said the new funding will support
Most Innovative People in Finance for their work co- product development, hiring and continued expansion
founding Hazel Network. The bank-led network enables as demand for regulatory-ready banking AI grows.
financial institutions to integrate tokenized deposits
and stablecoins using a unified smart contract model RESEARCH
designed for programmable compliance and operational
controls. Launched on the Ethereum mainnet in April,
Hazel Network supports automatic conversion between Latinia finds governance gap
tokenized deposits and GENIUS Act-compliant stable- in banking communications
coins. American Banker recognized Sinnott for block-
chain-based payment initiatives and Long for advancing Latinia released a new industry perspective highlight-
digital asset infrastructure and regulatory clarity for ing what it calls a growing governance gap in bank-
stablecoins. ing related to critical customer communications tied
to financial events. The company said many financial
Nayax a double honoree at The Vendies Awards institutions rely on fragmented infrastructures to man-
age fraud alerts, payment notifications, authentication
Nayax received two honors at The Vendies Awards messages and other customer communications, creating
2026, winning Best Payment System for its VPOS Touch challenges around consistency, traceability and opera-
unattended payments solution and earning Highly tional control.
Commended recognition in the Customer Service cat-
egory. VPOS Touch combines cashless payments, telem- Latinia believes that as real-time payments, digital bank-
etry and operational intelligence in a single device ing and fraud prevention efforts expand, banks must
designed for vending and unattended retail environ- apply stronger governance to customer communica-
ments. Supporting more than 80 payment methods and tions. The company described this emerging approach
deployed on more than 250,000 machines globally, the as “Critical Event Governance,” treating communication
platform provides features including real-time monitor- processes as a core operational layer requiring oversight,
ing, loyalty integration and offline payment capabilities, resilience and accountability similar to other critical
Nayax stated, adding the recognition follows its recent banking functions.
launch of VPOS Media 4, a new payment terminal fea-
turing PIN-capable payments and enhanced customer Fraud eroding consumer trust in digital economy
engagement tools.
New research from LSEG Risk Intelligence highlights
Sperax launches SperaxOS growing consumer concerns about fraud in the United
States and its impact on trust in the digital economy.
Sperax said its SperaxOS AI agent workspace for decen- One-third of U.S. consumers surveyed said they had
tralized finance is now fully public and open source. been targeted by a scam within the past two years.
The platform enables developers to build, deploy and
monetize AI agents capable of safely executing on-chain
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